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Purpose The seepage of companies' capital accommodated by weak country-level institutions is inconducive to building sustainable businesses. Companies' performance on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues is still a challenging question. This study aims to test the predictability of ESG on the performance of the health-care industry from a global perspective, while accounting for the country disclosure and director liability indices and performing robustness tests. Design/methodology/approach This study relies on panel data of 912 companies operating in 38 different countries for 2012–2020. This study controls for firm-level variables (leverage, size and loss), macroeconomic variables (COVID, gross domestic product and inflation) and institutional variables. Findings Findings indicate that countries with different levels of disclosure exhibit different patterns. Distinctly, the environmental pillar has a concave impact on return on assets, and the role of the disclosure index greatly manifests with the environmental pillar. Practical implications This study ponders the impact of country disclosure on sustainability practices from a global health-care perspective. Originality/value This paper is original, as it addresses the relationship between ESG performance and financial performance while accounting for the impact of institutional factors such as the business disclosure and director liability indices.

Purpose This study models the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of the private health-care sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. This paper aims to address the economic, societal and sustainability of the health-care sector. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from Bloomberg and the sample consists of 534 firm-year observations from 55 firms listed over 2010–2020. The authors apply panel data and control for the country and governance effects. Findings The authors found heterogeneous results regarding the three sub-sectors. The pandemic has a negative effect on the accounting and market performances of the “Pharmaceutical companies” and an insignificant impact on “Healthcare Management and Facilities Services.” Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 on health-care firms’ performance depends on the country’s economic classification and the degree of regulatory and governance frameworks. Research limitations/implications Further studies may consider a larger sample and other regions. It is recommended to address the health-care sector's challenges to invest in new technologies such as “digital twin” and predictive and personalized medicine. It is worth testing model development theory and its effects on speeding up and designing models to ensure the proper functioning and developing mathematics to determine uncertainties in patient data and model predictions. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is novel as it is unique in modeling the impact of COVID-19 on the health-care public companies in the MENA region. The findings pinpoint firms’ and countries’ heterogeneous impacts on financial and market performances.

PurposeLebanon has faced one of the most severe financial and economic crises since the end of 2019. The practices of the Lebanese banks are blamed for dangerously exposing economic agents and precipitating the current financial collapse. This paper examines the patterns of manipulation of the 10 biggest banks before and after implementing the financial engineering mechanism.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply Benford law for the first and second positions of the reports of condition and income and four out of the six aspects of the CAMELS rating system (Capital Adequacy, Assets Quality, Management expertise, Earnings Strength, Liquidity and Sensitivity to the market) by excluding Management and Sensitivity. The deviations from BL frequencies are tested using Z-statistic and Chi-square tests.FindingsBanks seem to have manipulated their Capital Adequacy, Liquidity and Assets Quality in the pre-financial engineering and considerably in the post-financial engineering periods. Fraudulent manipulations in the banking sector can distort depositors, shareholders and regulating authorities.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has many implications for governmental authorities, commercial banks, depositors, businesses, accounting and auditing firms, and policymakers. The Lebanese government needs to implement corrective fiscal and monetary policies and apply amendments to the bank secrecy and capital control law. The central bank should revamp its organizational structure, improve its disclosure practices and significantly reduce its ties to the government and the political elite.Practical implicationsThe study findings suggest that the central bank should revamp its organizational structure, improve its disclosure practices and significantly reduce its ties to the government and the political elite.Originality/valueThe study is the first to examine the patterns of fraudulent manipulation in the Lebanese banking industry using Benford Law (BL).

Purpose As reporting environmental, social and governance (ESG) information is not yet mandatory in all countries, it is intriguing to understand ESG’s underlying driving mechanisms. This study aims to investigate ESG determinants in the banking sector of the Middle East and North Africa countries. Design/methodology/approach The authors gather data for 38 listed banks for the period 2011–2019. The data used is threefold as follows: data related to ESG; firm-level; and country-level data. While ESG and firm’s level data are taken from Refinitiv, country-level data are extracted from the World Bank. Using panel regression, the authors test the effect of firm- and country-specific variables on the overall ESG score and its pillars. Findings Results indicate that banks’ ESG scores are negatively affected by performance and positively affected by size. The level of economic development exerts a negative impact on the environmental pillar while the social development exerts a positive impact on ESG and governance pillar. Corruption is the only country-level that gathers a homogenous effect on ESG scores. Finally, the three pillars follow heterogeneous patterns. Originality/value This study extends the scope of previous studies by introducing new country-level independent variables to contribute to the understanding of ESG antecedents.

PurposeThis study investigates the impact of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices on environmental performance in firms operating in the discretionary sector in the G20 countries. The sample covers 749 firms for the period 2010–2020.Design/methodology/approachThis study combines qualitative and quantitative data to examine the impact of the implementation of GSCM on accounting performance measured by the operating margin (OM) and return on assets (ROA). The authors also moderate the effects of Six Sigma and quality management (QM) and ISO 9000 and control for firm variables and COVID 19.FindingsUsing a panel data regression and structural equation modeling (SEM), results indicate that discretionary firms with internal solid GSCM practices combined with external environmental monitoring of suppliers are likely to outperform their peers in environmental issues. Using hierarchical regression, results indicate that both ISO 9000 and S&QM have moderating effects at some level of performance. Furthermore, environmental performance is positively correlated with accounting performance. This study contributes to the literature by addressing the impact of GSCM and the importance of reinforcing green and social regulations to protect the planet.Originality/valueThe paper is one of the first to measure GSCM triple components and account for COVID-19 in the context of discretionary companies and G20 countries. It highlights the impact of green initiatives to cope with major disruptions and decrease pollution and environmental disasters.

Purpose The credit crunch of 2008 and recent COVID-19 influences underscored the importance of liquidity and credit risk management in businesses and financial institutions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of liquidity risk and credit risk management on accounting and market performances of banks operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a panel data regression analysis on a sample of 51 listed commercial banks operating in 10 MENA countries during the period 2010–2018. Findings The results show that credit risk management does not affect the accounting performance of banks, while it has a non-linear, convex relationship with market performance. Surprisingly, liquidity risk management is not a significant driver for either performance measure in studied banks. However, when a bank combines credit risk management with liquidity risk management efforts, liquidity risk management actions return significant results on both performances, illustrated by an inverted U-shaped relationship. In addition, this study examines the joint impact of both risks on bank performance. This study reveals that accounting and market performances are differently affected by joint risk management efforts. Their impact depends on the combination of risk management ratios upon which banks choose to focus their efforts. Practical implications The findings help bankers and regulators further consider non-linearities and offer them new tools for managing the impact of credit and liquidity risk interactions towards achieving more financial stability. Originality/value These results contribute to traditional banking in offering bankers and regulators new tools for managing the impact of credit and liquidity risk interactions on bank performance.

In the rise of digital transformation and big data, accounting and auditing professions are required to adopt advanced techniques that help detect irregularities and frauds. This chapter collects 1,112 documents from Scopus database published in 288 sources over the period 2008-2021. A bibliometric analysis is used to depict trends, and applicable methodologies are adopted to build a comprehensible base that will serve to instill a new fraud detection model. More specifically, RStudio through “biblioshiny package”, VOSviewer, and Excel are the tools embraced to analyze the dataset information. The chapter explores the literature growth over time and addresses key aspects of the literature, such as most relevant documents, authors, countries, citation analysis. This chapter applies a network and content analysis using the bibliographical coupling, trend analysis, word cloud, and co-occurrence analysis. The theoretical model helps auditors, forensic accountants, top managements, analysts, and policy makers predict potential anomalies and misstatements.

Purpose This paper provides a state-of-the-art review of the financial development in the Middle East and Central Asia (MECA) and examines its impact on its economic growth. Design/methodology/approach The authors use a Panel Data Regression Analysis on a sample of 21 countries in MECA for the period 2008–2018. Findings Using the financial development indices and subindices retrieved from IMF, the study finds that the whole region has a below average index compared to other developing regions. However, this hides a great deal of variation across MECA countries. Surprisingly, financial development does not necessarily contribute to economic growth. It seems that some developing countries are still not predisposed to benefit from financial development due to several obstacles. Practical implications The authors recommend policymakers and regulators in MECA to promote financial stability and keep inflation in check so that economic agents can reap the fruits of financial development and foster economic growth. Policymakers should also stimulate competition in the financial sector, build skillful human capital, attract foreign direct investments, strengthen supervision and forensic audit and more importantly reinforce the independence of central banks. Originality/value The authors mitigate the shortcomings of single indicators as proxies for financial development by using the IMF Financial Development index that captures the depth, access and efficiency of both financial institutions and financial markets. The authors employ lower-middle-, upper-middle and high-income country groups to test the magnitude of income level on the relationship between financial development and economic growth.

The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management (JIKM) published its first issue in 2002 and celebrated its 19th birthday in 2020. This study aims to assess JIKM performance over its lifetime between 2002 and 2020 by extracting data from the Scopus database and using a combined approach of bibliometric and content analysis. More specifically, we evaluate JIKM’s productivity and stature, discuss its performance compared to other journals, and identify key contributing (authors, institutions, and countries), citation pattern, and conceptual structure. The results highlight JIKM’s growing presence, which is reflected in the dual rise of publication activity and accumulated citation. JIKM becomes one of the preeminent journals in the area of knowledge management, with a broad range of scientific actors’ contributions (authors, institutions and countries) from all over the world. Furthermore, using a bibliographic coupling, keywords’ analysis, and co-authorship analysis, we analyse JIKM’s content and identify the most frequent themes discussed. The analysis reveals that JIKM has expanded its scope from knowledge management to a new array of emerging technologies’ topics such as artificial intelligence and data mining. Graphical visualization of similarities (VOSviewer and Rstudio) shows that the major themes published are clustered into four groups, mainly (i) sustainable knowledge, (ii) emerging technologies, (iii) information management, and (iv) organization culture and knowledge sharing.

Given the unsettled ESG-CFP (Environmental, Social, Governance-Corporate Financial Performance) relationship and the scarcity of research covering emerging markets firms and the impact of each of the ESG pillars on CFP while considering the industry sector categories, this paper is pioneer in investigating this relationship for 108 East Asian listed firms operating in the Industrials sector for the period extending from 2011 to 2017. The overall ESG scores together with their components are used to study their impact on CFP while considering accounting (Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE)), and market measures (Stock Return (RET) and Price-to-Book ratio (PB)). We used panel corrected standard errors to address contemporaneous cross-correlations related to the panel cross-sections. Our findings showed that the ESG-CFP relationship depends on the ESG pillars, the type of CFP measures, and the industry nature. No relationship was detected between ESG and CFP when proxied by accounting measures while a concave relationship with Stock Return and a convex relationship with Price-to-Book ratio were revealed. When ESG pillars were considered separately, a convex relationship was obtained between Environmental and accounting performances and between Governance and Price-to-Book ratio while a concave relationship was depicted between Social and accounting performances. At the industry level, ESG negatively impacted the market performance in the Transportation industry compared to no impact in the Capital Goods industry. Consequently, ESG investment decisions in East Asian firms must be well calibrated and planned out to avoid undesired financial outcomes, while a shift in the mindset of managers toward a better ESG development is necessary to attain short-term gains and sustainable fiscal and social advantages.

This paper analyzes the relationship between change in capital and change in risk for a sample of 23 Lebanese banks between 2009 and 2014. Using the simultaneous equations model, our evidence reveals that banks determine their capital and risk levels simultaneously, with a negative relationship. While banks adjust their capital rapidly, they adjust their risk slowly. Furthermore, undercapitalized banks adjust their capital levels more rapidly than well-capitalized banks, and they increase their capital when they decrease their risk. However, there is no conclusive evidence regarding the role of regulatory pressure in driving risk-taking behavior. Finally, there are no major differences in the relationships between capital and risk regardless of whether banks are listed or not.

Opaque markets suffer from asymmetry of information and inaccessibility to financial data. SMEs operating in such markets play an important role and substantially contribute to their economy. Evaluating SMEs financial performance for such markets remains a hard task and hence such sector is completely marginalized. This paper attempts to proxy the financial performance by gathering a bundle of qualitative traits that play a mediating role towards financial performance. We support our study by identifying three specific areas that best describe SMEs internal capabilities and environmental conditions. We measure a score, validate it and use it to proxy SMEs financial performance in Lebanon. We find a positive relationship between the score and return on investment (ROI) and return on assets (ROA), which support our hypotheses.